


In This House We Are Whole

by orphan_account



Category: Shameless (US)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 07:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3519788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You good?” Lip asked her.</p><p>Fiona turned out her palms, shrugging before letting her hands fall with a slap against her thighs. That question always had the same answer, didn’t it? Had to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In This House We Are Whole

**Author's Note:**

> Missing scene from 5x08.

“You takin’ off right away?” Fiona asked when they walked in the door.

Lip looked around, scanning the room and noting the silence that seemed to have fallen over the house. “Thought you might need my assistance taking out the trash but it looks like he wisened up.” His voice was quiet, mindful of Liam’s sleeping head on his shoulder.

Fiona raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. “For now.”

“You have to go, Lip?” Debbie asked. Carl was gone and Ian was sick and she had been hoping to spend the evening watcher her eldest siblings hash out a plan to fix it all.

“Yeah, probably should.” He laid Liam gently on the couch, kissing his forehead before pulling away. “I left Kev back at the dorms.”

Fiona wrinkled her brow in confusion. “Kev?”

“Yeah, he was helpin’ me scrounge up some cash.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Probably not.”

“I’m gonna head to bed,” Ian muttered, his eyelids heavy.

“Alright, man, hey.” Lip stopped him, pulling him into a hug. “Things are lookin’ up, right?”

Things weren’t looking up. Ian had flushed his meds and Mickey had given up on him and his family still insisted on coddling him and forcing the words of this diagnosis down his throat, treating it like it was a death sentence. But he nodded at Lip anyway, too tired to do much else. He tried his best to lift the corners of his mouth into a smile before going upstairs, leaving his siblings to exchange tired, wary looks.

Lip sighed and scratched the back of his head, turning to Fiona.

“You good?” he asked her.

Fiona turned out her palms, shrugging before letting her hands fall with a slap against her thighs. That question always had the same answer, didn’t it? Had to.

“Alright, well, call me tomorrow. We’ll get his meds shit sorted out somehow. I’ll see what I can do-”

Fiona cut him off. “You need to get your tuition shit sorted out.” Ian needed his meds, yeah, but Lip was always a little too willing to find an excuse to push school lower on his priority list. She’d like to shove him out the door for good and tell him to come back when he had his degree, knowing being tied up in their family drama made succeeding in school ridiculously difficult. But she knew she could never do that. She would always hold on to him by the fingertips and he would always let her.

“Yeah, I know that, Fi. But without his meds he’s probably going to do a lot worse than steal a baby next time.” He spoke quietly for fear of Ian overhearing, but his tone still carried frustration. “I’m just saying, who knows what kind of drugs rich college kids do? Might be a big hipster market for mood stabilizers and antipsychotics.”

“It’s fine. We’ve got this. Worry about your own shit, okay? I don’t want to see you back here with your tail between your legs because you dropped out.”

“Is dropping out the same thing as getting kicked out for insufficient funds?”

“Yes.”

“Fair enough. Still. Call me tomorrow, yeah?”

Fiona wrapped her arms around her brothers neck, letting her eyes close and her shoulders relax for half a second in his embrace. “Yeah.”

Lip squeezed her reassuringly and moved to do the same to Debs, his hug telling her that he wouldn’t be far away.

*

Fiona sighed heavily and sank back further into the couch.

“You wanna talk?”

Debbie shrugged. “You look tired.”

Fion grinned. “I’m always tired, Debs.” She patted the couch next to her, inviting Debbie over. Fiona couldn’t remember the last time she’d relaxed on this couch with her siblings, taking a break from the chaos of their lives to just exist. Just be together.

Debbie took a seat next to Fiona, leaving no space between them on the couch. She leaned her head against her sister’s shoulder and allowed herself to feel small.

“How’s your boyfriend?”

Debbie paused for a moment, wracking her brain to remember if she had even mentioned Derek to Fiona. She hadn’t mentioned much of anything to Fiona lately. Hadn’t seen much of Fiona lately. That was probably why she had brought it up - to prove to Debbie that she hadn’t left, not completely. But she had. And her asking Sammi or Carl for a tidbit of information to throw at Debbie didn’t change that.

And yet Debbie couldn’t bring herself to call her out on it. Here she was, her head on Fiona’s shoulder, Liam’s feet against her thigh, and she felt at ease for the first time in a while.

“He’s great.”

“Great, huh? What’s so great about him?” Fiona prodded, sounding as tired as she looked but also sounding like she genuinely cared.

“He’s really nice. And funny. He’s fun to hang out with. And he really likes hanging out with me. That’s cool, ya know? When someone really wants to hang out with you.”

“That is cool,” Fiona replied, squeezing Debbie’s knee. “One of the most important parts.”

“And he tries to make me feel better. He cares when I’m sad. And he listens. I told him about Ian and about Monica and he listened.”

Fiona smiled, relieved to find out that Debbie had someone like that. Even more relieved that Debbie was telling her about him. “He sounds like a keeper, Debs.”

Debbie wanted to continue this conversation. She wanted to keep playing the game where they pretend like their lives are good, like there’s not one problem in a holding cell and another in a bed upstairs and a million others being dodged by their words.

But the nagging thoughts wouldn’t leave her alone. “What’s gonna happen with Ian?”

Fiona sighed. “We’re just gonna have to get him to a clinic to refill his prescription. He’ll come around. We’ll worry about it tomorrow. Let him get some rest tonight.”

 _Let me get some rest tonight._ Fiona said it and Debbie heard it. Fiona wanted to keep playing the game, just for tonight, while Ian was asleep and Carl was in jail and there was nothing immediate that she could do.

“I went to see Mickey,” Debbie told her, addressing another thought that was plaguing her mind. “I really thought he’d come.”

“Not everyone’s Gallagher strong. We got us. That’s enough.” Had to be.

“Ian was so sad, though,” Debbie said, thinking of her brother’s defeated expression. “I wanted to tell him that Mickey would be back.”

“Me too,” Fiona confessed. She would love nothing more than to tell Ian that Mickey would come around. But she’d seen what this diagnosis could do to people. She’d already seen the cracks in Mickey when they’d visited Ian; the way his jaw clenched and his eyes closed and his hands scraped against his jeans and then balled into fists. She watched him begin to unravel and imagined he had continued to do so.

The Gallaghers were family. They would stick together no matter what. They had to. But Mickey had an out. She wasn’t surprised he had taken it.

“But we couldn’t,” Debbie said. Fourteen years old and she knew that love couldn’t hold people together.

“No,” Fiona admitted. “We couldn’t.”

Hearing Fiona’s admission of the fact only made Debbie feel worse. She couldn’t get Ian to take his meds, couldn’t get Mickey to snap out of it, couldn’t tell Ian that his boyfriend hadn’t left him for good. She couldn’t do much of anything to help.

And now Carl was in trouble, and she couldn’t think of a single thing she could do to help with that either.

“I miss Carl,” she mumbled, thinking out loud.

Fiona snorted. “You saw him an hour ago. If he were here you two would be fist fighting for the remote.”

“I know. But he’s not here.”

“I know.” Fiona knew what she meant. She missed him, too. All those nights she had spent away from here, curled up in Gus’s bed not knowing what her siblings were up to, suddenly felt like a huge mistake. At the time the kids had barely crossed her mind. They were old enough, they were fine, they were probably safe in their own beds. But now the regret was piling up, filling Fiona with blame and doubt.

“You’re really moving back?” Debbie asked, snapping Fiona out of her thoughts.

“I am.” And for the first time Gus’s absence and cold-shoulder didn’t feel like such a bad thing. It had brought her home.

“I had things under control while you were gone, ya know.”

“I know you did.” She shouldn’t have had to. But Debbie had always been a caretaker, always so much older than her years. Fiona had taken advantage of that. “You always do. Thank you.”

“Still, it’ll be good to have you back.”

“Yeah.” Fiona wrapped an arm around Debbie, pulling her in close. “It’ll be good.”

*

The sound of the back door opening made them both stiffen. The last thing they needed was a drunken Frank interrupting their moment of solace.

Relief washed over them at the sight of Mickey walking through the door. 

He glanced at the stairs as he walked past them, approaching Debbie and Fiona instead. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Fiona responded. _Where the hell you been?_ died on her tongue. He was here. That was enough.

“He upstairs?”

“Yeah.”

Mickey lingered in the doorway for a moment, looking like he wanted to say something. An apology to Fiona or a thanks to Debbie or an explanation to both of them. Instead he ran his tongue across the corner of his mouth, unable to choke out the words.

Fiona nodded and Debbie gave him a reassuring look. They all had things they wanted to say, but they were all grateful that none of them needed to be said. Mickey retreated back into the kitchen, up the stairs to where he belonged.

“You did good, Debs,” Fiona said into her hair, soaking in the warmth wrapped in her arms. “You did real good.”

**Author's Note:**

> I felt like we missed out on a scene between the Gallaghers at the police station and Ian in bed, so I wrote this. Thanks for reading!
> 
> I'm on tumblr: backstreet-gurl.tumblr.com


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